jimmarchi1's forum posts 8022

I had on original shin-ei... Sounded like a chainsaw... But if you wanna do jamc thats their sound. Any old amp will do. I am sure your cheapo marshall will cover you uf you just score the right fuzz. The big muff is all wrong as us the rat. They'e really distortions electrically speaking...

sissies

42 and windy is NOT cold.... that's my region's wather in October

I've been to LA in the winter many times, its at worst a little brisk, very pleasant if a bit rainier than the Boston to DC corridor where I'm from. When you guys get a quick rains torm its like all hell broke loose for a few hours....

http://www.premierguitar.com/articles/24926-fractal-audio-systems-ax8-review

its lighter on processing power than the rack unit, but for me probably not a big deal because I don't go too crazy with effects.... anyone else thinking of getting one of these things to try out? I'm not sure I could play through it exclusively, but it might be a cool option for small stages, silent recording at home and as a 2nd or 3rd 'amp' in my layered rig.... I think I want one! its cheaper than the new line6 helix thingy

the demo sounds pretty damned impressive and being a DI device I expect its a pretty accurate representation

can't you just learn them by ear?

back when I sang my son to sleep I used to do this exercise where I would think of a bedtime setlist (some pop/rock/folk songs, children's songs, old standards etc) and then get the lyrics only off the internet, then practice singing the melody as best I could from memory while playing intuitively along on guitar.... next thing you know I would refine it, write it out if needed and generally if I bothered to look on the web my arrangement was the same as or better than the original (well, at least better for solo guitar and voice at 9pm next to crib, but you get me). It was sually about an hour's work for 5 songs, maybe a little longer if I loaded too many numbers in that hail from the Sinatra and nat king cole era and had to really fidget with some 'jazz progressions' as strummers like to call 'em

just start with the melody, the basic triads from the chords and aybe some diatonic harmony as passing tones and build from there using your memory. Sometimes listening to a song too much makes it harder to transcribe

I enjoyed Moana, what i saw of it... he got bored and misbehaved about halfway through and I had to take him out in the lobby. It was not a resounding success of a 1st theatrical movie, but that's down to him being unable to sit still and be quiet for more than an hour and I shoulda known better! As bright as he is, he likes his entertainment short so he can get back to jumping around and taking stuff apart....

if you need help with the x-mas music, just ask. I will help you! I am off from work for the next week.

ah the SVT.... may it bring you much joy and your audience much tinnitus

watcha doing for a cab?

oh no, I really wanted that first viola and that first casio.... later I really wanted that 1st cheap strat so I could play it -- I always loved music and I still do. If it doesn't sound like it , its just because I dislike people.... well, a lot of people, not you, Terry. Music is great though. Much more reliable than humans.

genres are for fans.... I am a 30+ year trained musician starting from classical strings as a tot. Its a linear progression with an expanding palette of instruments and a continuous incorporation of applied science as a programmer, engineer, technician etc augmenting my existing performance skills on anything with strings or keys

my son's 3rd birthday party was an immense success today.... much better than the last 2 even though it was just at my house and not a massive event.... FUCK YOU CHUCK-E_CHEESE and similar kids venues.

okay, in silverface it depends on the model! some circuits were utterly butchered beyond allr ecognition by '72, others changed a little bit for the worse gradually over time and weren't fully mutated until the 80s and then the little amps didn't change much or in the case of some, AT ALL. The champ and vibrochamp are identical in silverface to blackface. The Princetons switched from a GZ34 rectifier to a 5U4 and got a bias tweak from the factory that makes them cleaner (but you can switch the rectifier and rebias to get blackface and brownface tones, really) and then the Deluxe reverb is almost the same circuit hacing a slight change in the way the eyelet board is mounted and I believe some snubber caps added that prevent self oscillation (due to the change of parts positioning) but also make the silver ones a little duller than the black ones but still way more lively than the reissue.

Silverface's worst offender is the Twin which was moronically butchered by the end of its run and not in a way that helped it compete with Marshall's 70s amps that were owning the charts. You get what theyw ere going for, but all the changes were done so peicemeal that they didn't wind up working well together whereas if they designed an 85 watt amp from the ground up to have a master volume, ultralinear hifi output section etc it woulda probably soudned way cooler. The ideas in the silverface fender ideas aren't bad taken individually, they are just badly implemented and poorly thought out by CBS's no-musician engineers. The SF Twin (and to some extent the alter SF Super and Pro reverb aps which slowly got the twin treatment) really gives the whole 70s line its bad wrap, but there are lots of winners in the line too. Silverface introduced the mighty Bassman 50 and 100 (fender's first purpose built bass amps that really sounded good for bass) as well as the MIGHTY Bandmaster Reverb, Fender's 1st head with reverb that is essentialy a headboxed blackface pro reverb... the mid70s were a weird time for music having funk, disco, metal, punk, cleaner and poppier country and western from folks like George Jones.... a lot of guitar needs to address. I think fender just didn't know which way to go and they really looked at doing similar things to all their 'stage-size' amps instead of taking the modern approach of each model coming in 2 or 3 wattages but addressing a specific niche type sound.... but the most important thing to say for silverface fender is:

ALL SILVERFACE AMPS HAVE BETTER TRANSFORMERS AND COMPONENTS THAN ANYTHING FENDER HAS MADE SINCE THE EARLY 80s OUTSIDE THE PRICIEST CUSTOM SHOP AMPS. THEY ARE ALL AHNDWIRED ON THE CLASSIC EYELET BOARDS. THEY HAVE A CERTAIN RETRO 70s CHIC TO THE UGLY SILVER AND BLUE COSMETICS THAT"S HIP AGAIN TODAY.

off the top of my head w/o even pressing play it reminds me a lot of the Gibson Chet Atkins thinline from the late 90s.... fabulous guitars, part 335, part double cutaway "Beatles on Sullivan" Gretsch... wish I had one -- probably IS that model

I run 2 dissimilar amps ALL THE TIME and have for years. Its great. You can A/B them for clean/dirty or layer them up for complex tones. Using stereo effects that way can take some dialing in though since the amps aren't responding the same, but it can be done. The easiest thing to carry off in a dissimilar Y setup is ping ong delay. Seems to work well for me with the Matchless against the tweedie... but I've only done it in my house so far. Most of the time my 2 amp use is not really stereo but layering or doubling using a detune effect on 1 amp to get a thick, wide, complex tone in decently sized venues, particularly when I'm the only guitarist and its very riff based music where I need to fill up a lot of sonic space while playing very few chords....

The Princeton is only a biscuit louder than the vox but its definitely tighter and cleaner. I do not recommend a reissue, they don't sound very good. Even a silverface Princeton with or without reverb kills the RI. They're also very expensive... same goes for the deluxe RI. For a little more buy a silverface. It won't depreciate in value the way RIs do and they just sound much better. Old fender is more reliable too. You can't kill a 60s or 70s fender amp. They're indestructible.

Vox and fender are miles apart though. Best to have both. Good for different things. If I have to choose its Vox, but I like having the Pro around too and could use another Bandmaster head.

Here, Jim, you're the expert about it. I'm just the texpert.

are you being facetious.... anyway, Narcy probably has it, the guitar looka like a Hagstrom model that's Thunderbird-like.... Tel-Nobody MAY be correct that its a Teisco T-Bird knockoff, but I've enver seen any Teisco's that knocked off that shape.... also check Eastwood guitars, they might currently make a T-Bird style guitar, not sure though as I don't like knockoffs of vintage junk axes.... that's lamer than playing an old junker you paid Gibson prices for! the pickups look a little teisco-ish though....

I don't know nuthin' about travel mini-guitars like that.... I have a friend who owns a guitar that looks a lot like that and its older and is a short-lived Guild model, not sure what era, but he got it around 1999 so....

those Ibanez pedals are more recent than you think, they are part of a short lived 90s series that included some modulations and a digital delay... there may have been other mdoels in the series that were exclusive to japan, I haven't seen those in a dog's age

I am not sure what model the consumer Yamaha synth/keyboard is, not one I owned as a kid, but its older and the brightly colored buttons should help you identify it.... probably part of the PSS range -- the groovebox looks like a Korg Electribe EA1 (I think that's the omodel number.... I am pretty sure its the 1st gen analog modelling electribe, I had one briefly when it came out but hated it -- it was a real 'get what you pay for' device... I also wasn't very slick with synths and MIDI back then).

Tel Nobody is right I think.... it looks like an MPC1000 in black but I am not an Akai expert, I have never been real into hardware samplers and when I did use one I went for super cheap because I don't really use them the way hip hop dudes do where they need the tight Linn timing and huge memory to sample whole loops of existing songs

Not sure about the gibby. Gimmee a sec, toddler emergency

an AC4 is not really stout enough in the power supply and output section for modern metal but it should cover anything pre-slayer, especially with the rat for extra bazinga. Voxes love Rats.

I was actually playing some very silly metal-type riffs earlier on the new Selmer, I pushed her way into saturation with the rat-type TC distortion out front with my hottest LP, scooped the mids out on everything LOL. Sounded surprisingly amazing. Much better than modern purpose-built metal amps. At least to my ears (which admittedly are not tuned to metal).

If you aren't happy with the Vox anymore you can trade or sell her off for all manner of good tube gear, tis a very high end production amp. I ahd thought you planned to use her for home practice without your pedalboard to refine your chops and touch, but I admit she is not the most versatile amp for anything else. Great little small stage rocker though. Wind her out in a band setting through a borrowed 2x12 and stand back. But she maybe doesn't have enough headroom to handle most pedals at gig levels, nor does she have enough power and bandwidth to do the modern type of metal sounds. I assure you if shes not emeting your needs you can flip her for something that will do a little more metal at reasonable wattage like a jim root terror or whatever else the AD&D kids are playing thru these days....

are you going for the bass-beast or what???

I think my Selmer is being delivered today and I am off from work until after x-mas so I can really enjoy her.... if the boy lets me. Now I just need to formulate some polite excuses for the police when they inevitably show up asking me to turn down.... I wanna dime this bitch out and shake some windows!

I see the TS9, definitely a TS9 and the mini is indeed a Malekko mini analog delay, forget what they call it (the 919 maybe? not sure anymore) but its the itty bitty mass-produced PCB guy that replaced the hand-assembled ones in larger MXR enclosures that came in 'dark' and 'bright' varieties, you can tell by the weird monohorome graphic

its really a fender? guess its just a funky angle of the headstock which doesn't look like the classic spaghetti logo at all to me.... huh

rehashed many times! consult the old forum posts and read the excellent EB article:

http://equipboard.com/posts/best-audio-interfaces

vintage BBs and ACs are pretty much unattainable unless you're a Doctor these days, the market went crazy after I got my 60s vox... I was pissy paying more than a grand for an old amp at the time, little did I suspect where the prices were going... thanks Ebay

but seriously, collecting stuff is a disease that eats up too much of my time, floor space and money and I need to stop, just play and enjoy! go get yourself a beat up silverface deluxe and be done with it... they are great amps that sound every bit as good as blackface, command less money and were made in such large quantities that there's a silverface deluxe for every player wh0 wants one.... you already have a lot of pretty valuable stuff, its just not the best sounding stuff. If I were you I would be looking to flip several of those reissues into something boutique or vintage and maybe an extra guitar if there's money left over! Or wait, I may have been looking at your WANT IT list and not your HAVE IT list. I am an idiot.

I can never bring myself to try the tone king stuff at the amp show or in the fancy man stores. Something about the name... http://vignette3.wikia.nocookie.net/simpsons/images/2/20/Plow_king_shoots_mr_plow.png/revision/latest?cb=20160318042618

but I have been really tempted to try his JTM45 styled amp, the regal I wanna say? The demoes I've heard of her had a certain somethin' going on that's got me interested, but god knows what the tone is in person. YouTube clips are so deceptive.

oh, hey, have you looked at Avatar's marshall styled amps? Yeah, Avatar, the cabinet maker. People seem to really like these amps and the asking prices are pretty reasonable. I think they do a JTM45 and 2 different riffs on the 18 watt.

Waldorf stuff rocks, period.

I haven't tried the Volca FM yet but have high hopes for it.... I'm on my 2nd Volca Bass. Sold my 1st one because it was a 'toy' and then regretted it and bought another one and now I get it. I don't care for the Keys though. The Drum machine doesn't have individual outs making it utterly worthless to me. The kick is a nice alternative to the Joemox....

I'm kinda cooling it on synth purchasing for a while I think.... though I am tepted by Volca FM and the Korg Minilogue. The monosynths are really taking over my little studio and I think I'm due for a poly. I only have 1 polyphonic analog left and it doesn't have any knobs and sliders to fuck with.

you have a Minitaur, right? have you had it up against a Model D and a Phatty? Is it really dirtier and thicker like the old Taurus was reputed to be (never seen a real Taurus) or is it just same old same old? My SE1 and Sub Phatty are different enough that I can justify having both, but I'm not sure I can justify a Minitaur even though I kinda wanna see what its all about.

amp collecting is fun IF YOU CAN AFFORD IT.... I can and I am a nut for buying AND trading my amps, I own 3 different ac30s and a matchless right now as well as two oddball but collectible 50 watt el34 amps and a tweed Pro.... its great.... IF YOU CAN AFFORD IT! if you have a wife and kids on a musician's income, drop it unless you are making MAD money at a long term gig, its an expnsive hobby and you can take ahit if your expensive amps go out of style right when you wanna sell. The rule is save money and buy during economic downturns and ell during upswings so you make money on each trade. It can be tough though! I broke even on the jimmy page supro (1624, great little studio amp, not for me though) and some other wicked combos because I had to sell before the market was ready for me fully due to family issues. I sustained the lack of profit and moved on, but that was ME. Building amps is STILL EXPENSIVE and the resale is shit. Careful, tread lightly if you are not flush with cash at all times!

your current stable contains 3 of the worst, stiffest, least expressive reissues,,,, look at unloadingthem for max profit and focusing in on an amp that is equally tuneful and YOU

there's lots of great stuff out there in every decade, don't be snobby about brand or era... so many great amps.... and then of course there's the AC30 which is head and shoulders above, well, everything!

a jtm45 is not a 1st build, no way! I edited my LAST post

the fenders sound off too apart from the Clapton branded tweed twin which sounds BETTER than an original low power twin

if your friend is up to it order a metro JTM45 kit and have him make it, its a hard build though if hes never done a big amp.... there's a lot of lead dress issues a modder won't have dealt with in his modding... evnen a guy who has bilt champs and such might fuck it up because its way more susceptible to oscilations and noise than a small amp.... I've owned legit vintage marshalls thata cted as radio antennas and broadcast FM rock stations in the right building at certain angles (which is why I toured with a reissue plexi, the lead dress was exemplary and with a little tweaking it owned on my old superleads in the end)

but if he can build a complex amp, the ebst kit is universally accepted to be the metro kit and both the martran and mercury magnetics radiospares output transformer provide different shades of vintage transformer saturation.... its funny, a well made jtm45 is like a tighter and punchier ac30, the speakers have so much influence on an amp I have to reiterate that you need celestion alnicos or great clones like the webers and taydens (for a vox I prefer blue reissues, but in a marshall the cloners get there.... even eminence's red fang rocks out the right way with a 45) for THE sound

EDIT:

personally I am all about the non-marshall 50 waters lately (okay, marshall calls the jtm45 a 30 watter, but its way louder than an ac30 with a set of high efficiency alnicos)... I love my old traynor PA head which is very Orange/Matampish and delivers marshall crunch, hiwatt clarity and Orange HEFT and I just bought a Selmer treble and bass from '64ish I have high hopes for having liked all the different treble and bass selmers I've ever tried.... everyone has the marshall sound, but other british, Canadian and european manufacturers have made other shades of the 50 watt sound that just didn't win the war for reasons that have nothing to do with tone. So never discount a totally different EL34 variant with vintage sopology, they can totally school a marshall for tones outside the marshall's narrow comfort zone, for real.... and Iw as once a vintage marshall accumulator, had tone of them made between 1969 and 1990

people dig the bassbreaker but the build quality looks like shit to me... they also use EL34s and that's a JTM50, real 45s used either 6L6es or similar but creamier KT66es and were very much gainier tweed bassmans

truth be told the current production bluesbreakers don't actually sound that stellar, they are a little stiff, even the handwired reissue... I have no idea why! old marshalls and the best clones seem to have a softer sound, especially played clean (there's a smokiness to your notes but they are clear, never muddy) and they also have a 3D quality to the sound as you get a few feet from the speakers that the Marshall reissue line lacks. Maybe its the drake transformers versus the old radiospares....

the JTM45/bluesbreaker sound is all about the KT66/GZ34 output section that has a different magic than a tweed bassman or later EL34 powered plexis.... its not my thing, but its righteous when you find a good example of an old marshall or a modern clone that does the business.... that said I am REALLY REALLY partial to the Dr Z Route 66 in this camp, its like a bluebreaker only better in an undefineable way (likely the way the output tubes are run as wella s the use of an EF86 pentode in the preamp over the ubiquitous 2 channel split triode design of the bassman and jtm45)

the other component of the sound is speakers.... the real classic tone is alnico celestions over greenbacks, even in a head and 4x12 cab setup some form of alnico celeston is really the ticket t the full on juicy compression and smooth response.... there were bluesbreaker combos with greenbacks (claptons may even have ahd them, no one knows) but for my buck I want alnicos, they really do THE CLASSIC SOUND.... greenbacks of both magnet sizes are more of a superlead thing

on the cheap, the late 60s Traynor YBA1 with 6L6es and a tube rectifier is a great jtm45 type head with amazing tranformers... they do the business.... anything that has EL34s from the YBA line will be more of a later plexi sound, it needs 6L6es or 7027A power tubes and a GZ34 rectifier. They can be tough to find but can be had for about 600 to 800 USD on ebay and reverb when they turn up in good working order. Get n open backed 2x12 with some celestion golds or weber bluedogs or silverbells and you are golden for about a grand total buy in. Otherwise look at a Dr Z combo, they are stellar providing 45 tones as well as a host of other delicious sounds thanks to the more versatile preamp (I think Z makes some plexi type amps that are evne closer to the original marshall, but I gotta tell you the Rt66 is a best seller for a reason, its an amazing sounding amplifier, really fabulous and capable of a world of good late 60s brit sounds-- the rest of Z's stuff is just okay)....

pretty much every boutique jtm45 clone with good transformers costs as much as a marshall reissue, though many of them school the marshall giving real bang for buck... its just a lot of bucks you have to outlay to hear the bang! Personally I was really wowed by Germino's JTM45 model but I've not tried every clone out there. You could go Ceriatone though, they make a decent enough clone at a low price, the transformers are okay and the build quality is first rate.... you will want to replace the output transformer eventually though f yur plan is to play her at 10 all the time. If you're in the USA there's Sligo who basically builds weber kits on Ebay for folks. I played a used Sligo 45 in a store in Maryland and it wasn't bad at all, but it was the priciest version with mercury magnetics transformers and sozo caps (if you believe that there's a difference in sound between different brands of carbon film capacitors, I dunno -- but good transformers make a big difference in an amp design that's all about cranking up)....

you need to define 'cheaper' for us and yourself.... too much cheaper may not be realistic to get anything but a 2D approximation of the sound.... these weren't cheap amps in the 60s.

its all apples and apples comparison though.... a bassman RI, Bluesbreaker RI, tweed twin RI, clones, the DrZ 66 and even vintage examples all share the same DNA and get in the same ballpark, but given your comments on the fender breaker's muddiness it sounds like you are picky like me, so YMMV -- horsehoes and handgrenades tones may not cut it for you and you will find yourself chasing and chasing until you wind up with an ancient example and some boutique stuff for backup LOL I ahd so many superleads from different eras and boutique builders to boot, man. All similar yet no 2 sounding the same TO ME

the headstock logo is not fender... it appears to be some sort of inlay and the word starts with an M

I cannot read the logo, but the headstock screams Washburn to me. Could be ANYTHING though. Start with older Washburns. 60s/70s maybe? The glossy finish is probably not older than the 60s

the electric is a custom T-style obviously, but the headstock is at such an angle that its illegible... why do people hold guitars like that? its not comfortable to play them all sideways.... grubby hippies, hrrmmm

looks like an older Washburn back when they made good acoustics

I thought about it if I got the cheaper one, the saved 600 would be turned into a cabinet, but I drive a 2003 Dodge Neon. I have no way of traveling around with an 8x10.

I hear that! I ahd a Neon. It caused me to buy some vintage combos (igniting my love affair with the vox ac30) back when I had been collecting marshall stacks for awhile and the stacks didn't get used until I was in a pro band with a van and trailer! Mine also was super unreliable and the extra 600 in savings could help you when it has its next spaz out and needs a new drive belt or radiator. The SVT can be like that if you use it all the time. The tubes naturally run down after a year of steady use at ANY volume (power amps run full tilt all the time, the preamp controls level) and the retube investment on matched 6550s is considerable for this amplifier!

That being said, I have no experience with tubes. I've read about them and had a lot of buddies that used them, but I myself don't know everything about them yet. I've not experienced that distorted drive sound that people talk about unless you consider playing with high gain and low master, but that's not my tone anyway. It makes me wonder though... if I turned a tube head to max while plugging it into a PA, would the PA be getting that sound but under a controlled volume? Also, don't Heads have some audible noise from them without being connected to cabs?

a tube amp MUST be connected to an impedance matched load or the power will backwash into the output transformer and melt the windings... the way to plug a tube amp into a mixing board is to put it on a DI designed to take the pummeling and use the 'thru' jack on the DI to feed the speaker cabinet or a load box (an atificial impedance device designed to handle about double the RMS wattage at the correct impedance, however some loads sound weird because speakers are reactive to the amp not just sonically but electrically so you want whats called a reactive load for anything audio versus static loads for tech work where you need to run the amp to meter mods or repairs and a reactive laod is ahrd to find over 200 watts handling)... no heads do not make music without cabinets. If your tubes are esonating hard and the cabs in another room like in a studio you might hear the tubes rattle some ahrmonics but nothing we would call music, just weird vibrations thata re sympathetic to your playing.... but if your head does this its time to retube. Its actually a bad thing. The tube grind you are excited about is a mixture of subtle distortion from the preamp tubes, power amp tubes and speakers interacting with your playing, something transistors do not do well. The thing is, the SVT has so much power that you aren't going to get it at small venue levels, you could use the preamp control and master volume to overload the first preamp tube or 2 like in a modern amrshall or mesa with a mastervolume, but that's probably not ging to eb the sound you are imagining, more like a solid state amp with a tube preamp (though smoother and better than all but the most expensive hybrids). Even in big venue situations most bassists get very clean sounds out of their SVTs though. The real SVT thing is the magic heft given by all those enormous 65550 tubes driving the huge chunk of iron in the utput transformer. Big iron core transformers have amazing bass enhancing properties and that's the #1 thing bassists are seeking out of the SVT and similar HUGE tube amps. No one has yet simulated the thick transformer saturation in the low end with a solid state or modelling amp. Its a FEEL IT thing. Even at 1 its there to some extent, the transformer adding low harmonics like a jet plane taking off. Also, the SVT has amazing tone controls, simple but incredibly versatile and effective. The midrange control is a brilliant design that's a lot like coveted vintage recording studio EQs.... but if you want grind try a V4, same basic preamp, smaller power amp that will add grind a little earlier. though the wattage is 1/3 of the SVT its loudness is more like 1/2.

My only cabinets that I still own now are Seismic; a 4x10 and a 1x15. I've heard they are terrible but they've been good for what I use them for. Rarely I will plug something in that the speakers don't like at low volumes.

I really dig, or dug when I played with one at a guitar center in 2010, MarkBass cabinets. A lot of people I look up to are switching from Ampeg, SWR, and such to Aquilar, but what I've heard of them through the internet videos, I don't like their tone.

Mark Bass is god stuff, so is Eden, but Mark Bass is cheaper by a lot... not a lot of other bass cabs I like. So many cabs are geared towards slappers and how often does one need to funk it up that hard? I would audition cabs with an SVT in stores as you will find its picky about cabinet design. Its not fond of ported designs and horns in my experience but YMMV, when I hear an SVT I want a really specific thing from it and you might be looking for your own signature tube bass tone.

I don't know if they make it anymore, but I actually prefer the big Mesa bass amp. Its like 3 or 4 hundred watts from a pile of 6L6es (8 or so? 10 dunno) so it has the vibe of an ENORMOUS bassman. It sounds great. Its what paul McCartney uses for bass on the road and a former Beatle can play through any amp he wants.

but the whole V series is still the benchmark for loud-ass bass

I have experience with both the standard CL and the blue line with 70s cosmetics.... they are built very similarly (not so different even from 60s/70s originals which were PCB amps) but there seem to be bad batches of the regular version whereas the blue-line with vintage cosmetics have much more consistent reliability as you have figured out for yourself.... to the best of my knowledge the CL is supposed to use better quality components across the board (no pun intended) ina ddition to the better PCB and wire dress you mentioned which doesn't seem to improve the sound to my ear (both sound great if you like the big 70s arena bass sound) but probably further improves reliability.... that said, the bassist from my biggest band toured with a standard issue CL built in the late 90s for YEARS and it was the only bass amp he owned that never went down at a gig or practice. He still owns it and its only needed servicing once that I know of.

I know you are thinking 300 watts is not loud by modern bass standards, but SVT watts are tube watts. 300 watts of clean signal reproduction on an oscilliscope. A tube amp keeps getting louder after the onset of inaudible distortion and compression. The SVT only sounds great played HELLA loud. Its insanely loud.... it easily cuts through 200 watts of marshall power. It may be too much amp for you. The V4b is a more modest 100 watts that is insanely loud, but more of a giggable volume and you can work the amp nice and ahrd without deafening small audiences...

just a word of caution there about the deafening volume of an SVT used in anger (the only way worth using it)

the SVT is the gold standard of rock bass amps... there are tube bass amps I like better in the 200+ wattage range, but not by a lot....

you're getting the 8x10 'fridge' cab right? it needs that, it sounds weird thru other cabinets... it doesn't even matter what speakers are in the 8x10 to my ear, its just something about the gonzo size that makes her kick the way an SVT should... which is like a mule.... a mule on PCP in a fight with local police officers

Egnater SS4 head switcher has become my x-mas gift. I called Ultrasound who distributes them exclusively and arranged a better price I swore not to repeat. Finally I can MIDI switch up to 4 different heads into 1 cabinet thus forcing me to justify it by joining a gigging local band in the new year. I am kinda envisioning myself getting another head or 2 in the near future just to use all 4 head loops.... I am seeing the traynor (which I finally finished servicing and tweaking internally to deliver a real early orange/hiwatt type sound), my matchless, maybe a blackface fender bandmaster for clean cleans and something stupid high gain like a soldano, EVH or orange so I have a real variety of flavors.

I'm kinda envisioning a rig that's a bit like a POD only with legit gear LOL

EDIT:

I just got a deal from a friend on a '65 Selmer Treble N Bass 50 (shes a bit hacked up inside with a replaced power transformer and a switch to diode rectification like a mk3 TnB to accomodate the lack of center tap on the replacement tranny) so I'll be seeing what that's all about.... I've enver tried a big EL34 selmer. It seems a lot like a blackface fender with british tubes on paper. Maybe it wil bridge the gap between superleads and bandmasters/bassmans. I think I will be needing to restore the 70s Arbiter AC30 and sell her though. I don't really need 4 ac30 type amps anyway, whereas a second flavor of el34 50 watter will be fun. The Selmer has so little in common with the traynor that I expect she will sound completely different. Its funny, they basically sue the same components, just in a completely different arrangement. I thought I was done with EL34s when I sold my last superlead 5 years ago, but truth is I was just done with vintage Marshall. Everyone's got THAT sound. A lot of the big amp competition (other than Laney) had its own thing going and I want to build that library of tones. I dipped my toe in abck in the day with the V series ampegs and a loud-ass Sunn I sometimes regret selling, but I never touched Traynor (okay, okay, the most famous traynor is a plexi, but the other mdoels are unique and interesting), Selmer, Sound City, Hiwatt, Matamp or Orange.... the time is now

http://cdn.wegotthiscovered.com/wp-content/uploads/Moonrise-Kingdom-prog.jpg

this is common sense here:

if its working its fine and you got a great deal thanks to a minor cosmetic problem.... just baby it so the damaged section doesn't get any worse, after all its not a road microphone like a 57.

The folks at BLUE are very friendly and you may wish to write them to see if they can repair/replace the damaged section or send you a new piece to install yourself. I have dealt with them and gotten all sorts of gratis replacement parts for microphones I owned that took a spill. Though I was the 1st owner of those microhones and they were under warranty, the sort of abuse they got was not part of the warranty and the BLUE staff were eager to help me free of charge anyway.

you'd be surprised how few subtractive synth sounds (including pads) use the sine wave.... the Minimoog Model D didn't even offer it as an oscillator shape

any long sustaining sound either tuned to a basic harmony or setup as a polysynth so you can play chords is called a pad and they can take all sort of forms.... start by trying to do some classic subtractive string, voice and organ style pad sounds

https://music.tutsplus.com/tutorials/subtractive-synth-basics-part-2-classic-pads--cms-20381

and just a general list of good articles:

https://www.attackmagazine.com/technique/synth-secrets/ https://www.attackmagazine.com/technique/tutorials/analogue-style-string-synthesis/

pretty decent

its not that simple, classical isntrument strigns aren't constructed like steel guitar (and bass) strings

a quick googling yielded this informative article

https://www.johnsonstring.com/resources/choosing-strings/strings-electric.htm

I think you have too much release on the amp envelope... synth1 is touchy.... also, there's something too pretty going on, not detuned enough.... try turning up the detune on osc1 and on the unison section.... and there's no vibrato at the end of notes but I am not sure synth 1 is the ideal option for that sort of subtlety with LFO assignment, I forget how involved the LFO section is

not quite how I was hearing it, but in the right ballpark there

in about 5 minutes I made a pretty close approximation in tyrell and did a screen capture

http://imgur.com/a/dgUu6

I hope the image can be blown up big enough for you to read my settings and get an idea what's going on.... you can probably get a more digital, bright version going with similar settings in synth1, tyrell does a pretty darn good job being warm and analog for a piece of software